I went back on to WHOOP on the sabbatical. Maybe not because I was desperate to get back onto it, but because I still have a subscription running from when I initially did it 18 months or so ago, and so I thought, God, that's lying on my bedside table. I should put it back on again.
I came off WHOOP before because I didn't like what it told me, and it seemed in spite of what I did, it told me that I was in bad shape, but the truth was I probably wasn't in the best shape, and I could have paid a little more attention.
As I was fighting through the changes that occurred from about January 2022 when my thyroid stopped working, it was hard to find any sort of balance; I'd jumped from high to low, exhausted to ecstatic, all sorts of different ups and downs (note to self, probably worth an update of the thyroid blogs that I used to do) but I got to a stage just after a couple of weeks in the sabbatical where I decided I'd stick the bracelet back on and see what happened.
I'm back to that stage again where I look at it in the morning, and I promised myself I would only look at it once a week (but the software doesn't really work well like that), and I know the things that are not good for me, and I know if I do the things that are not good for me, the WHOOP will tell me that I've not had the best of days or the best of nights.
But one of the things it's doing now is keeping me honest, making me more accountable to myself, the numbers on we are actually doing quite well, probably better than they've done for a long while, because I have a greater understanding of the fact that the older I get and the deeper I get into the things where my body becomes a bit more worn out here and there then the more I have to take responsibility for looking after myself and not expecting someone else to look after me.
It turns out, though, that the greatest gift I've had in this direction for most of my adult life is Alison (my wife, for those who don't know her).
Alison is one of the most gifted and extraordinarily intelligent people I've ever met.
There are different types of intelligence, so maybe she's not great at calculating maths problems, or maybe she's never gonna work at CERN, but she is practically utterly brilliant and understands instinctively what is good for her and what makes her happy, and I get to piggyback off the back of that (although I don't always take her advice).
And so, having these things in your life, a wife that supports you like that and tells you what you should do and knows you or a coach or a friend or WHOOP, something that keeps you honest, holds you accountable for just trying to be a little bit of a better version of yourself; It's priceless really.
It's very unlikely that the WHOOP subscription will be renewed when it runs out in March, but with a very different approach than I had when I started it.
Blog Post Number - 4060